Team PHAntom, including teaching assistants and Dr. Anne Meyer, pose with their gold medal. Pictured are, from left, back row, Anthony Renzi, Owen Oxley, Yifeng Zhao, Zack Vanderhoff and Elizabeth Martin; middle row, Lacie Low, Dr. Anne Meyer, Cassidy Garibaldo, Shailey Guddeti, Victoria Wang, Clare Liu, Hannah Lee, Sevarakhon Umarova, Sophie Black and Maia Kurti; and front row, Jessica Wang, Soham Bandyopadhyay and Daniel Oh.
Glen Ridge resident Sophie Black was part of a team that engineered bacteria to create plastic on Mars.
The team consisted of 14 undergraduate biology students at the University of Rochester, who brainstormed the project, carried out the research necessary to complete it, and presented it at a conference in Paris, France.
The project’s goal was to create a biological system capable of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and converting it into a biodegradable plastic. This project’s name was PHAntom, since the plastic the team aimed to create is known as PHA.
One of the goals of PHAntom is to help facilitate a Martian colony by enabling plastic production on the planet.
Transporting materials from Earth is incredibly expensive and inefficient, and thus a way for materials to be produced on Mars is likely necessary for a long-term habitat.
PHAntom uses CO2 as the input because the Martian atmosphere is incredibly CO2-rich, thus making the system more efficient.
To test the capabilities of the bacteria, the team designed and built a machine known as a clinostat. By rotating a biological sample on two axes, the force of gravity can be averaged out over time, which is used as an approximation of lower-than-Earth gravity. Using the clinostat, Martian gravity can be approximated in a lab here on Earth, with the team’s cheaply built and easily replicable machine.
The team consulted professionals across a wide range of fields to ensure that the needs of stakeholders were met both on Earth and on Mars. In doing so, they learned about applications of PHAntom here on Earth.
This research was carried out under the umbrella of a program called iGEM, or International Genetically Engineered Machines. Teams from all over the world work on projects for a year or more, then travel to Paris and present their findings.
This year, team PHAntom won a gold medal and received 4 nominations, which, by number of recognitions, means they were the best performing American team. The nominations were for Best Hardware, Best Entrepreneurship, Best Space Project, and Best Wiki.
The team’s head advisor is Anne Meyer, a long-time iGEM judge and a professor of biology at the University of Rochester.
“I was really blown away by how successful the team’s project was,” Meyer said. “Their amazing success is really a tribute to the team’s innovative thinking, strong teamwork, and persistence throughout the course of their project. This team never quit thinking about ways to improve their project, and their creative troubleshooting really paid off in buckets.”
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